Regional Director of the Southwest
Birthright Israel Foundation

ELIAS SARATOVSKY
President & CEO

Elias Saratovsky serves as President & CEO of the Birthright Israel Foundation, an organization dedicated to raising funds in the United States to support Birthright Israel and its various programs, including the classic 10-day trip, Onward, and Excel.

As an alumnus of the program’s inaugural trip in December 1999, Elias understands first-hand the transformational power of Birthright Israel and attributes his career in the Jewish and Israel space to his experience on the trip. As President & CEO, Elias is committed to ensuring Birthright Israel continues to flourish, building a generation of Jewish young adults who have confidence and pride in being Jewish and are proud of their connection to Israel.

Prior to joining Birthright Israel Foundation, Elias spent over 20 years in a variety of senior leadership roles at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Elias previously served as Pacific Northwest Political Director at AIPAC’s San Francisco office before becoming Director of AIPAC’s Southwest Region, based in Houston TX, where he managed a portfolio of seven states and 64 congressional districts. Most recently, Elias served as AIPAC’s National Director for Regional Affairs in Washington, DC, where he oversaw the organization’s nine regional offices and worked with his colleagues to maximize the national development campaign through strengthening donor engagement and expanding stewardship efforts across the country.

Elias is a native of Brooklyn, NY. He currently lives in Bethesda, MD with his wife and three children.

Jessica R. Feldan
Chief Development Officer

Jessica is the Chief Development Officer at the Birthright Foundation since 2017. Before joining the foundation, she has dedicated over 30 years working in development in the Jewish communal arena. From 2004-2017 she was the Associate VP of the Southeast for the American Technion Society (ATS). During this time, she helped the ATS achieve its $1.2 billion-dollar campaign goal and launch a new $1.5 billion-dollar campaign. As the AVP of the Southeast Region, she supervised a staff that partnered with the University, lay board, and donors, to help facilitate the building of student dorms, funding research, providing students with scholarships, supplying necessary research equipment, and furthering student access to services that have enabled them to achieve their goals and impact Israeli society.

Jessica began her career at the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York. She joined the UJA, later to become the Jewish Federations of North America in 1994. She served as director of the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County's Women's Division prior to joining the American Technion Society.

Jessica and her husband David have three children: Avi, who is a graduate of Brandeis University and currently works in finance, Eliana, who lives in Israel with her family and Daniel, a Phd student at NYU. Currently she lives on the upper east side of Manhattan.

Jessica is a graduate of Yeshiva University and earned her master's from Yeshiva’s Wurzweiler School of Social Work.

ALLYSON BERMAN GREENBAUM
Vice President, Central Region

Allyson Greenbaum has served as the Vice President of the Central Region for Birthright Israel Foundation since 2018. Prior to joining Birthright Israel Foundation, Allyson spent over 16 years in leadership roles in Higher Education. She most recently served as the Director of Major Gifts at Northwestern University, where she led a regional development team that helped to close the University’s historic $6 billion campaign. Allyson also raised major and planned gifts at the University of Chicago and was part of a team that surpassed its $2 billion capital campaign goal.

Allyson was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, and has called the Chicago area home for the last 21 years. She and her husband David are proud parents to Leah and Dylan.  

• Build and manage a fundraising portfolio of 100-150 donors and prospects at the $5,000+ level with the expectation of eventually cultivating and soliciting five-to-seven-figure prospects. This includes:
   
  • Initiating contact and meeting with existing and potential donors;
     
  • Using moves management to track interactions and create strategies on prospects to pursue;
     
  • Developing and implementing engagement and cultivation strategies;
     
  • Soliciting gifts of $5,000 and over from current and prospective donors.
     
• Work with the VP, Central Region to identify and qualify prospects and build appropriate strategies to capture individual giving.
   
• Build and manage a regional leadership council in Texas.
   
• Increase the number of donors and dollars raised in the region year-over-year.
   
• Coordinate with the national development team to achieve the organization's fundraising goals.
   
• Plan and attend events strategically designed to cultivate new prospective donors and steward existing ones.
   
• Utilize the organization's database (Salesforce) to maintain accurate records of donor interactions, individuals' programmatic interests, giving trends, and donor engagement and solicitation strategies.
   
• Other tasks and duties that are reasonably related to these job responsibilities.

• Bachelor's degree required; Master’s degree preferred.
   
• 5+ years of significant fundraising or related for-profit resource development experience.
   
• Experience and comfort working with high-level donors and philanthropists.
   
• Familiarity with the Houston, Dallas, and Austin Jewish philanthropic communities.
   
• Deep understanding of major gift fundraising principles and moves management.
   
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills.
   
• Strong self-confidence and high energy, along with a positive and proactive approach.
   
• A passion for Jewish engagement and the mission of Birthright Israel. · Self-starter with the ability to work alone and in a team.
   
• Keen understanding of donor needs and requirements.
   
• Collaborative work style and ability to influence people across, within, and outside the Birthright Israel organization.
   
• Solid organizational skills and attention to detail.
   
• Proficiency working with business technology and donor database systems; Salesforce experience is a plus.
   
• Willingness to travel as needed to donor meetings, events, and Foundation summits.

Birthright Israel is founded on three values that are central in the Jewish world: Unity, Community and Mutual Responsibility. The project itself is therefore a gift of the Jewish people to its younger members, given with no strings attached as a pledge by the State of Israel, worldwide Jewish communities and nearly 40,000 annual donors all putting partisan and theological differences aside to ensure the vibrant future of world Jewry and the State of Israel.

Birthright Israel is an introductory and intensive educational experience in Israel. Its mission is to create opportunities for participants to explore their Jewish identities, strengthen their connection to Israel and its diverse society, and contribute to the vibrancy of the Jewish people worldwide. Birthright Israel regards Israel as a diverse mosaic of experiences, narratives, ideas and places that can be effectively explored throughout the journey. As we maintain that Israel is a state of ideas and ideals, rather than an ideal state, Birthright Israel is committed to understanding Israel's place as a Jewish, democratic and sovereign state among the family of nations, and to preserving its historic and eternal standing as the homeland of the Jewish people.

Birthright Israel is rooted in a person-centered educational approach. It regards "people" as the subject matter of the journey, alongside sites, narratives, ideas and values. Birthright Israel views the needs and interests of young people as the starting point of its educational work, and aims to engage participants in meaningful dialogues with Jewish concepts, values and living, as well as associations with their home communities and with Israel. Birthright Israel is therefore committed to offering all participants a sense of ownership over the educational process, by empowering the active engagement and involvement of the learners as the captains of their ongoing Jewish journeys.

While seeking to connect young Jewish adults with each other, with their home communities and with Israel, Birthright Israel refrains from any political, ideological and/or religious partisanship in its platform. Their educational journey therefore endorses unity, yet does not seek any uniformity in either opinion or practice. Birthright Israel regards the group experience indispensable to personal identity formation, and therefore strives to build a traveling community of young Jews whose members exercise mutual recognition, tolerance, responsibility and trust, without undermining their diversity. This open, safe and pluralistic culture promotes meaningful dialogues about diverse visions and versions of Jewish living and associations with Israel. All participants are equally welcome to be part of the Birthright Israel experience by voicing their different opinions, irrespective of personal background, ideology, political views, religious beliefs and/or practices, sexual orientation or gender identity.

Birthright Israel views the land, the State and the people of Israel as a vital laboratory to explore core questions of both past and contemporary Jewish values, ideas and life. Correspondingly, Birthright Israel's programs are not structured as site-seeing trips, but as what they call "insight-seeing" journeys. The sites they explore are obviously important, yet serve a much higher purpose: to promote a culture of reflective and critical thinking through dialogue, discussion and the exchange of ideas in safe and supportive climates. By shaping the entire journey around such values, Birthright Israel wishes to motivate and elicit an inner quest for each participant and for the group as a whole, toward continued engagement with Jewish concepts, values, communal life and Israel long after their journey ends. Birthright Israel therefore endorses the Less is More approach, which does not seek to overload its itinerary at the expense of "rushed" visits and transitions between activities; rather, it calls for a thoughtful organization of the itinerary to allow each component the needed time to be explored in a manner that offers meaningful engagement, reflection and discussion.